Beth kept her voice low so as not to startle the animals. “Hey, Phil. Fiona,” she said to his teenage sister who, judging by her sleeping bag, intended to spend the night with poor Marigold. Both Phil and Fiona had willowy statures and fine brown hair that fell into their eyes. Fiona sat on the ground, hugging her knees. Beth looked at the horse. “How’s she doing?”
Fiona shook her head and bit her lip. She rocked herself gently.
“You tell us,” Phil said. “It’s her left eye.” His tone was hopeful. For Fiona’s sake, Beth thought.
Marigold lay on her side on a bank of straw, her eyes closed, and Beth took heart in the mare’s peaceful appearance. There was no indication that the eyelid had been damaged. Her eyelashes were horizontal, as they ought to be. The contour of Marigold’s head was smooth and free of swelling. Quite possibly, Phil and Fiona’s inexperience had overstated the trouble.
Beth made a gentle clucking noise to alert Marigold to her presence before kneeling and stroking the mare’s shoulder. The horse allowed it, approving with a deep sigh as Beth’s fingers moved upward on the neck, caressing the jaw in the comforting way that Hastings liked so much.
When her hands approached the mare’s eye, intending to lift the lid for a closer look, Marigold tossed her head away from Beth’s probing. She nickered a warning and shot an open-eyed glare that caused Beth’s hope to drop. The protective tissue over Marigold’s eye, which should have been water clear, was a white cloud so dense that the pupil and iris were nearly invisible. And toward the rear corner of the eye, the surface was uneven and waxy, like the dribbles of a melting candle.
“Her cornea has an ulcer,” Beth began.
“Is that bad?” Phil asked.
“Not normally.” Corneal ulcers were one of the more common injuries a horse might receive in its lifetime. Hastings had suffered his share. “I’m sorry, girl,” she said to the mare. “How long has she been like this?”
Beth shook her head at Phil’s optimism. “Sixteen days ago we could have turned this around with topical antibiotics. She might have improved in a few days. But this—this is called a melting ulcer. They’re wicked. Somewhere along the line that plain vanilla ulcer picked up some bacteria or a fungus. The infection is only going to get worse.”
Her first-aid kit sat in the straw beside her, worthless.
Phil glanced at Fiona. “What do we do?”
“You get a vet on this right now. A licensed vet. Tonight. I can call someone for you.”
“What’s he going to tell us?”
“That you waited too long to call him. That Marigold might need surgery to reverse this, depending on how deep it’s gone. Two weeks is a long time, you guys.”
“She just didn’t give any sign that it really bothered her,” Fiona said.
Beth was sure the horse had. It was more likely that Phil and Fiona didn’t recognize what they were seeing. “I don’t mean to be cruel, but you need to understand how serious this is. She could lose her eye if you don’t treat it aggressively.”
Fiona dropped her head onto her knees. Phil paled. He didn’t have to say what Beth knew was running through his mind. The cost of an equine surgery on a grocer’s salary would hurt. Even if surgery wasn’t part of the equation, the antibiotics, the anti-inflammatories, the medications to control the enzymes that were destroying the eye tissues would all add up.
Beth placed a hand on Phil’s arm. “Come with me for a second. I brought something that might help.”
Over the next several minutes, Beth focused on restoring hope to the siblings. She took them out to her truck and showed them the saddle’s silver.
“You can remove it from the leather,” she explained. “Sell it for cash. I’m sure there’s enough here to cover whatever Marigold needs.” It took some effort, but she eventually coaxed them into accepting the gift for Marigold’s sake. Then Beth called the Blazing B’s own vet and asked his phone service to rouse him from his sleep. While the threesome waited for Dr. O’Connor’s return call, she sang his praises. By the time he agreed to come out in spite of the hour, Phil and Fiona had regained some of their optimism.
“We thought of the perfect way to thank you,” Fiona said as Beth closed her cell phone.